Nowadays, a full-fledged television which can display three-dimensional (3D) images (to be referred to as a 3D television hereinafter) is about to come into the market. Various techniques required to display 3D images have been disclosed and put into practical use so far. However, since the brightness and resolution of a 3D image are inferior to those of a two-dimensional (2D) image, 3D televisions are unfamiliar.
However, in recent years, due to the advent of large-capacity optical discs such as a Blu-ray (BD®) and the prevalence of full-HD televisions, 3D images having high image quality can be played back by, for example, a frame sequential method.
Therefore, the 3D televisions will become widespread exponentially in the future. However, the amount of available 3D image content is still small. Against such a background, a technique for converting 2D image content into 3D image content, and generating pseudo-3D images based on the converted 3D image content (2D-3D conversion technique) has been disclosed.
As described above, the 2D-3D conversion technique has been disclosed, and televisions incorporating the 2D-3D conversion technique have been proposed. However, various playback apparatuses may be connected to a television, and miscellaneous image content may be input to the television.
A technique which controls 2D-3D conversion according to input image content has not been disclosed yet. The user does not always want to view a converted image (for example, a 3D image), and often wants to view an original image (for example, a 2D image). A technique which controls 2D-3D conversion as the situation demands has not been disclosed yet.